SPRING PRACTICE PERIOD: Stories from the Lotus Sutra

Dogen-Zenji so cherished the Lotus Sutra that he actually carved a selection of it into his door. This, the core text of not only Zen but the whole of Mahayana Buddhism, has never lost its appeal among practitioners of the Way. Join us for our SPRING PRACTICE PERIOD: Stories From the Lotus Sutra led by Sensei Joshin Byrnes, Sensei Genzan Quennell

Gate of Sweet Nectar 2015 (Part 4 of 5)

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Part 4: A song and questions. After Alan leads everyone in song, the panel takes open questions and jams. They consider: are there any restrictions on what people do with this liturgy when they leave? How does the joy in breaking boundaries dance with respect for boundaries? How do you feel about the word “death” — is it too final? Or does its definiteness highlight the sea change in whatever transformations might follow?

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Zen Master (Roshi) Bernie Glassman passed away on November 4, 2018. He was a world-renowned pioneer in the American Zen Movement. He was a spiritual leader, published author, accomplished academic and successful businessman with a PhD in Applied Mathematics. Bernie taught and traveled, giving talks and workshops on spiritual practice, socially responsible business and international peacemaking. He is the founder and Vision Holder of the Zen Peacemaker Order.

Personal and Education

Bernie Glassman was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1939. His parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe and he grew up in a Jewish family with a strong socialist orientation. After graduating from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, he went to work for McDonnell-Douglas in California in 1960 as an aeronautical engineer, concentrating on interplanetary flights. He also obtained a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from UCLA in 1970. Currently Bernie has two grown children and four grandchildren.

Zen Training and Teaching

In 1967, Bernie began his Zen studies with Taizan Hakuyu Maezumi Roshi, Founder of the Zen Center of Los Angeles. He became a Zen teacher--Sensei Glassman--in 1976. In 1980 he founded his own Zen Community of New York in the Bronx, New York. He started the Greyston Bakery, at first staffed by Zen students, as a livelihood for the Community, and then made it a vehicle for social enterprise in Yonkers, 3 miles north (see below). In 1995 Bernie Glassman received inka, or the final seal of approval, from his teacher and became known as Roshi Glassman. During that year and in 1996 he served as Spiritual Head of the White Plum Lineage, comprising hundreds of Zen groups and centers in the US, Latin America and Europe, as well as the first President of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association of America. His Dharma Family includes dharma teachers, zen priests, zen preceptors, zen entrepreneurs, Christian clergy, Rabbis, Sufi Sheiks and multi-faith peacemakers.

Social Enterprise

Bernie became a social entrepreneur in 1982, articulating a vision that socially responsible businesses can have a double bottom line: generating profits and serving the community. The Greyston Bakery was the first such venture, but it was merely one piece of a larger socially responsible business model which he developed, known as the Greyston Mandala (the Sanskrit mandala can be loosely translated as circle of life), a network of for-profits and not-for-profits working together to improve the lives of individuals and the larger inner city community of southwest Yonkers. Greyston, which celebrates its 33th anniversary on June 11, 2015 provides permanent housing, jobs, job training, child care, after-school programs and a host of other supportive services to a large community of formerly homeless families, advancing the principles of empowerment, empathy, and responsible action. Its main components are:

Greyston Bakery. Founded in 1982 in the southwest corner of Yonkers, a poor neighborhood beset by high unemployment, violence and drugs, the bakery began to hire people that conventional businesses had deemed unemployable It trained its employees in bakery crafts and soon they were producing some of New York's most expensive, high-end cakes and tarts sold in the city's fanciest eateries. In 1990 it began to produce brownies for Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream and its revenues shot up dramatically. Since its humble founding, the bakery has grown (2015) into a successful $12 million business with around 100 employees. Its hiring remains to this very day "First come, first served," and much of its profits are recycled into seed money for its sister not-for-profits, thus making the entire network more sustainable and financially independent.

Greyston Family Inn. This is Greyston's housing and support services arm. Since 1986 it has developed hundreds of low-cost permanent apartments for homeless families, for folks with AIDs, a large child care center, and tenant support services as well as after-school programs, providing wraparound support to families trying to come out of the cycle of unemployment, homelessness, and public assistance.

Maitri Center and Issan House. Opened in 1997, Maitri is a medical center serving 150 people with AIDS-related illnesses. It was among the first facilities in the country to provide alternative care therapies to people with HIV/AIDS. Issan House provides housing for many of Maitri's patients.

The entire Greyston Mandala (as of 2015) hires around 200 people and serves at least 2000 men, women and children annually in southwest Yonkers. Its model of integrating for-profits, not-for-profits, and spirituality has been studied by many other nonprofits and cities across the country as well as in universities. Bernie Glassman served as Founder and President/CEO of Greyston from 1982 till he left it in 1996.

Spiritually-Based Social Action and Peacemaking

In January of 1994, while leading a bearing witness retreat in Washington, DC, on the occasion of his 55th birthday, Bernie decided to create the Zen Peacemaker Order, for Zen practitioners dedicated to the cause of peace and social justice. Subsequently, the concept was broadened to become an international, interfaith network called the Peacemaker Community, stressing the integration of spiritual practice and social action through Three Tenets:

Not-knowing, thereby giving up fixed ideas about ourselves and the universe;

Bearing witness to the joy and suffering of the world; and

Doing the Actions that arise out of Not-Knowing and Bearing Witness

Together with his wife and co-founder, Sandra Jishu Holmes, Bernie left Greyston in the end of 1996 and became President of this large community of spiritually-based activists. He took a leave when his wife died in 1998, but from 2000 till 2004 he continued serving as President, devoting his energy to developing the Peacemaker Community and supporting various social action and peacemaking projects in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and the United States. This organization is now known as the Zen Peacemaker Order.

In 2004 Bernie Glassman began to develop a training campus to teach people the skills of spiritually-based social enterprise and peacemaking called the Maezumi Institute, in Western Massachusetts. In addition, he began to look into new opportunities for social enterprise programs, During 2005 he tried to develop such programs in partnership with local not-for-profits in Greenfield and Turners Falls.

Awards

Bernie was awarded the Ethics in Action Award by the Ethical Culture Society of Westchester and the E-chievement Award by Toms of Maine. He was named Man of the Year by the Westchester Coalition of Food Pantries and Social Entrepreneur of the Year by Business Week in 1993. He was a founding board member of the Social Ventures Network, a network of businesses committed to social change, and continues to serve as one of its spiritual leaders.

Publications

Bernie is the co-author, with Rick Fields, of Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Masters Lessons in Living a Life that Matters (Bell Tower, April 1996), and the author of Bearing Witness: A Zen Masters Lessons in Making Peace (Bell Tower, May 1997) and Infinite Circle: Studies in Zen (Shambhala Publication, 2002. He is also the co-author, with Jeff Bridges,, of The Dude and The Zen Master (Penguin, Jan 2014).

Hozan Alan Senauke is Vice Abbot of Berkeley Zen Center in California, where he lives with his family. As a socially engaged Buddhist activist, Alan has worked closely with Buddhist Peace Fellowship and the International Network of Engaged Buddhists since 1991. In 2007 he founded Clear View Project, developing Buddhist-based resources for relief and social change in Asia and the U.S. In another realm, Alan has been a student and performer of American traditional music for more than fifty years.

Roshi Joan Halifax, PhD, is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, and author. She is Founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist monastery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She received her Ph.D in medical anthropology in 1973. She has lectured on the subject of death and dying at many academic institutions, including Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Medical School, Georgetown Medical School, University of Virginia Medical School, Duke University Medical School, University of Connecticut Medical School, among many others. She received a National Science Foundation Fellowship in Visual Anthropology, and was an Honorary Research Fellow in Medical Ethnobotany at Harvard University. From 1972-1975, she worked with psychiatrist Stanislav Grof at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center on pioneering work with dying cancer patients, using LSD as an adjunct to psychotherapy. After the LSD project, she has continued to work with dying people and their families and to teach health care professionals as well as lay individuals on compassionate care of the dying. She is Director of the Project on Being with Dying and Founder of the Upaya Prison Project that develops programs on meditation for prisoners. For the past forty years, she has been active in environmental work. She studied for a decade with Zen Teacher Seung Sahn in the Kwan Um Zen School. She received the Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh, and was given Inka by Roshi Bernie Glassman.

A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order and founder of Prajna Mountain Buddhist Order, her work and practice for more than four decades has focused on engaged Buddhism. Her books include: The Human Encounter with Death (with Stanislav Grof); The Fruitful Darkness, A Journey Through Buddhist Practice; Simplicity in the Complex: A Buddhist Life in America; Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Wisdom in the Presence of Death; and, Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet.